The three families with kids reverently took their seats in the small chapel of Holy Rosary/Santo Rosario, a church built 136 years go in Minneapolis to provide for the spiritual care and other needs of unwanted and mistreated Irish immigrants who mostly worked the nearby railroad yards.

The 7 p.m. weekday Mass was dedicated this time to orphaned children, particularly those being cared for by the church-affiliated Queen of Angels Orphanage in Aguas Pietra, Sonora, Mexico.

But on this evening, as scores of youths played soccer and frolicked in a large play area across the street from the majestic church, its pastor, the Rev. Jim Spahn, extended the blessings to the wave of unaccompanied children from Central American countries showing up in waves at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent weeks.

“There are many who have died and will die escaping to the border because of difficulties back home,” Spahn said in Spanish during a brief homily. “They are looking for (family) unity and looking for Christ. They all need to be treated with dignity. But for political reasons, that is not happening.”

Ah yes, politics has once again muddied what is clearly a humanitarian crisis.

The political gamesmanship and finger-pointing are in high gear. Folks are pandering to the base instead of pondering together the best solution. Some want to revoke a law signed by former President George W. Bush that granted due process and deportation hearings to unaccompanied children coming from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — the same nations they are now fleeing from. The governor of Texas suggested the mass arrivals at the border might be a conspiracy generated by the Obama administration, though he gave no motive. And the speaker of the House of Representatives, the body that has, time and again in recent years, derailed any reasonable attempts at immigration reform, accused the president of creating this crisis and not doing enough to stem the tide.

REFUGEES, NOT IMMIGRANTS

When will the politically motivated idiocy end? Enough. This is largely a refugee crisis, not that different from those fleeing violence or persecution at other borders across the globe. Consider this as we do an emergency disaster response, where people come together regardless of divergent politics and lend a hand or provide shelter.

Stephan Cismowski clearly sees it that way. He’s a longtime parishioner at HR/SR and founder of the Minneapolis/St Paul Chapter of the Blessed Nuno Society. The society, which Cismowski directs, runs the Mexican orphanage through its Duluth chapter.

“Unlike the Mexican children who are brought to Queen of Angels, these children are not migrants, they are refugees,” he said. “They are fleeing the war zone-like violence in their native countries which is fueled by the American appetite for illegal drugs.

“It is difficult to suggest what should be done with them,” he added. “Sending them home would more or less be like sending a child who has escaped a burning building back into that building.”

Major entities share his views on refugee status.

A recent report by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees found that almost 60 percent of the children who made contact with the U.S. Border Patrol reported they were fleeing because of violence, human trafficking, torture or persecution at the hands of drug cartels or others.

Both the UNHCR and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have publicly stated that these minors and others should be regarded as refugees, not undocumented immigrants, and accorded all such legal protection, treatment and due process under international and domestic human rights laws.

KIDS ARE ‘INNOCENT VICTIMS’

The Minneapolis-based Advocates for Human Rights has been responding for months to the growing number of asylum seekers from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Just this past week, staffers interviewed two boys, ages 9 and 14, and a mother with two children under 5.

“All had fled the violence and instability resulting from the breakdown in the rule of law in the region,” explained Michele Garnett McKenzie, the group’s director of advocacy.

McKenzie said that each application of asylum triggers a laborious case-by-case process. No one is pushing for blanket refugee determination, she said, and noted that both Mexico and Nicaragua are also experiencing a dramatic uptick in children and others seeking asylum protection.

“U.S. immigration policy has neither caused nor fueled this crisis,” McKenzie added. “This crisis is not an immigration ‘problem’ that will be helped by deployment of more enforcement resources to apprehend illegal border crossers or by weakening international protection systems.”

The children at the Holy Angels orphanage range from newborns to 17. Most are either migrants or children whose parents died trying to cross the border or were casualties of the drug trade.

Cismowski said the difference between the two groups of children is that the child refugees “want to be caught, so putting troops or more Border Patrol on the border will only provide more people to greet them.

“This is less about a failed border policy,” he added, “than it is about 60 years of failed foreign policy with our neighbors in Central America. Regardless of politics, the one thing we should all be able to agree on is that these children are innocent victims undeserving of the cruelties that they are currently enduring.”

Spahn, who sees no difference in the hardships and aspirations of the immigrant Irish congregation in 1878 and the mostly Mexican one that makes up his church now, offered a prayer after the homily.

“Let’s pray for justice for the little ones and don’t ever be afraid to live and declare that what we believe is giving dignity to all.”

“Lord, listen to our prayers,” the three families of parishioners replied in unison.

From smoking crack in a Harlem drug den for a front-page exposé to covering the deaths of 86 people in a Bronx social club fire, Rubén Rosario spent 11 years as a writer for the New York Daily News before joining the Pioneer Press in 1991 as special correspondent and city editor. He launched his award-winning column in 1997. He is by far the loudest writer in the newsroom over the phone.

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